Pat Speer

Researcher Matt Douthitt called me up the other night on Zoom and captured the feed while we watched John Lattimer's presentation at the 1993 Chicago conference. For those not in the know, Lattimer was the first non-military doctor allowed into the archives to view the assassination materials, who then parlayed this into dozens of magazine articles, and interviews. It can safely be said that he did more to keep the single-bullet theory alive than ALL those involved with the creation of the theory, and was a huge influence on the thinking of the Oswald-did-it crowd. In any event, Matt decided to put the entire 5 HOUR conversation up on YouTube. Now, there's a lot of blithering on my part and a lot of repetition and almost certainly some mis-statements. But if you're someone with an interest in the case who would like to know what it's like to sit in on a conversation between two veteran researchers, this might be your cup of tea. Now, Matt does provide a lot of images and even some outside interviews, which help to illuminate Lattimer's nonsense. And of course there's the images from Lattimer's own presentation. So it's not just talking heads. In fact, if you are relatively new to this you can probably learn more from this video than probably any other video on the assassination, as it presents arguments for Oswald's guilt from a hero to the Oswald did it crowd, and then blasts gigantic holes through most of his arguments. Now it is FIVE hours long. So I think someone with an interest might want to watch a half hour at a time or so. Or not.

I will agree with your basic point, Bill. IF one is asked did Oswald act alone, the vast majority of people will say no, but not because they have an extensive knowledge of the case. IF one is asked what is your particular theory, as to who pulled the trigger, and who made the decision the trigger should be pulled, however, the Oswald did it all by his lonesome theory will be by far the most common answer. But, once again, it is not because those saying this have an extensive knowledge of the case. And there is a reason for this. if you study the statements of people commenting on the case over decades, you will find that many of those attracted to the more than Oswald theory view the case as part of a larger pattern of evil misdeeds by a they. These people are attracted to conspiracy because they see conspiracies everywhere. But by the same token, many if not most of those claiming Oswald did it now stop talking come from a position of fear--a fear of the unknown, and a fear that Oswald's possible innocence suggests something about America that they just won't let themselves believe. I mean, Earl Warren and Walter Cronkite were wrong? And Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, and Oliver Stone were right? For some that's impossible to fathom, and their whole world is threatened by such a possibility. Now, I have spent countless hours arguing online, and discussing the case in emails and in person with people of both camps--the Oswald did its and the more than Oswalds. And I can say that at least 50% of what most CTs believe is garbage, and at least 20% of what most LNs believe is garbage. So from hearing this, one might think I'm leaning towards LN. But no, far from it, the myth put together by the Warren Commission was stretched so thin that if even 5% of what they claimed is garbage, then a reasonable person would have to accept the possibility there was more to it than Oswald.

FWIW, Bell claimed she was in the room at the beginning, not at the end, when Clark arrived and inspected the wound. She also claimed she'd been shown the wound by Perry, who, as I recall, claimed he'd never turned the head, and who, I'm fairly certain, said he had no recollections of her being in the room. As she had clearly concocted (or grossly misremembered) her story about giving fragments to the SS or FBI, we have no reason to believe any of the other additions to her story. I think people need to realize that most of the latter-day recollections of witnesses--whether it be Bell claiming Perry showed her the wound, or Landis claiming he put a bullet on a stretcher--are nonsense, and not to be relied upon. And this cuts both ways. Didn't Mike Howard cough up some some crazy story about Oswald towards the end of his life? Well, that was obviously nonsense. I put Bell's and Landis' recollections in the same box.

What the??? As stated, Jenkins is on camera saying the back of the head was shattered beneath the scalp but not blown out of the skull. He has said a lot of things that are problematic for the official story, that's for sure. But he has claimed this part of the head was intact at the beginning of the autopsy. He has also claimed, since forever, that no pre-autopsy surgery was performed at Bethesda and that Horne is completely off-base. When I spoke to him, and asked if maybe Humes had done thus surgery in another room, he was adamant that there was no other room, and that nothing of the sort happened at Bethesda. I think he was open-minded about the possibility something had occurred somewhere else, before the arrival of the body at Bethesda, but Horne won't have that, as he's cherry-picked numerous pieces of evidence and put them together to create a completely phony story about Humes altering the body, and is unable to break away from his creation. P.S. I notice that you mention Jenkins' claim he saw a bullet wound by the ear. Well, he initially said this was a gray smear on the bone, which helped convince me I was correct about a bullet's entering at this location. Then, after being pounded for years by your heroes, he started claiming he saw a bullet hole by the ear and not just a gray smear. And then, with the release of JFK: What the Doctors Saw, these years of manipulation paid off--as Horne was now claiming this bullet hole, which was originally not a bullet hole, was actually a bullet hole high on the forehead. Which Mantik and Horne had conjured up from almost nothing... In any event, it's nice to see you acknowledge Jenkins said this was by the ear, and that Horne's claim it was really high on the forehead is nonsense.

The denuding of skin is symptomatic of tangential wounds, Vince. As the bullet strikes at a shallow angle, a piece of bone pulls forward and tears the skin.

It's not my conjecture. Jenkins said the back of the head between the ears was shattered but still intact beneath the scalp in filmed interviews with Harrison Livingstone and William Law, and then again at two different JFK Lancer conferences which I attended. At the first of these, there was a breakout session with about 30 people in attendance in which he was repeatedly grilled by Aguilar and Mantik about the back of the head, and told them repeatedly that it was shattered but intact beneath the scalp. Of course Mantik turned around and told this to Doug Horne and within days Horne had an article online in which he claimed Jenkins had told this audience that the autopsy photos are inaccurate and Horne then twisted this into Jenkins' claiming the back of the head was blown out--when he had actually said the exact opposite. Now, the next year, he made an appearance with Mantik and Chesser and I spoke to him a bit with Matt Douthitt, and I told Jenkins these guys were taking his words and twisting them into support for their belief the back of the head was blown out. And he said "What are you gonna do? People will believe what they want to believe..." So I was as shocked as anyone when I saw Jenkins pull a flip-flop on all this but when I looked closely at his book I found my answer--he credited Mike Chesser with help on the book. So, yeah, from where I stand--and from what I have witnessed personally--Mantik, Horne, and Chesser are in the deception business. Now they may be deceiving themselves first and foremost, but they are not particularly interested in the truth, IMO.

Yes, I am aware that Mantik was briefly swayed by Horne, but his 2021 presentation on the FFF website was presented from the perspective of Humes, and he has Humes lying about just about everything, but NOT about any pre-surgery to the head. In fact, he claims Humes, when first observing JFK, saw a giant hole from front to back on the right side of his head.

I try to keep tabs on Mantik's latest findings, and I'm not aware of anything new in this one. Essentially, about ten years ago, he started claiming his OD readings not only proved a white patch had been added to the x-rays, but that the hole on the back of the head was apparent on the x-rays, only we can't see it. And, then, around this same time, both he and Horne started claiming there were two headshots from the front, and three in total--one that entered near the temple and blew the Harper fragment off the occipital bone, one that entered the forehead and exited the left side of the back of the head, and one that entered near the EOP.. Now, the only thing I'm not clear on is what Mantik thinks happened to the bullet entering near the EOP. Horne says it did not exit and that there was no exit wound on the front of the head. But Mantik has long-claimed the large fragment was frontal bone, and that Humes saw a gigantic wound at the beginning of the autopsy, so I gotta believe he thinks this was blown from the head and found in the limo, as purported and, to my eyes anyhow, demonstrated in the Z-film. Now, here's the thing. Without pushing what I believe because who cares really, there are obvious problems with Mantik's scenario. The alterationist wing of the party, so to speak, was formed because Lifton and others had a notion the Parkland witnesses were great witnesses and could not be wrong. But Mantik has 1. A bullet entering near the EOP that exited somewhere on the top of the head, with neither entrance nor exit being observed at Parkland. 2. A bullet entering near the temple that blew out the middle of the back of the head, with the entrance going unobserved at Parkland and only half the exit being observed at Parkland. 3. A bullet entering high on the forehead and exiting from the left side of the back of the head, with neither entrance nor exit being (knowingly) observed at Parkland. He's got six wounds, of which but one half of one wound was observed by the Parkland witnesses I trust I'm not the only one who has a problem with this.

I am not sure what you mean here, Keyvan. I am not aware of Mantik's changing his opinions on anything for this book. Isn't it the same stuff he's been saying for years?

I am sure you know this, but Marina later told researchers that her testimony was poorly interpreted, and that the transcript was misleading as to how she actually testified. Do you have access to a top linguist, who can create a new (and hopefully, Marina-approved) transcript?

I would agree that she probably ID'ed him, but her behavior during her testimony and her inability to recognize Oswald in a photo really really hurts her credibility, to the point where she would probably be written off by a jury. Can we at least agree on that?

I agree. Perry clearly THOUGHT it was an entrance wound. And his recollections of its size strongly suggest it was either an entrance wound, or the exit wound of a slowly moving object. I just don't believe there was a concerted effort to get him to change his and others' opinion it looked like an entrance wound. And if there was, it failed. Because pretty much everyone at Parkland who saw the wound prior to the tracheotomy said it was small and appeared to be an entrance wound. I think what some miss here is the context. Emergency room doctors make their observations and put things together, but they are frequently wrong, and know it, and defer to the opinions of others, who ran additional tests or who are more expert in the field. So, knowing this, we have to accept that some if not many of the Parkland witnesses could believe both that the throat wound looked like an entrance wound, and that it was not. Perry is, I believe, among those. My own experience illuminates this situation. I was very weak and dizzy. I went to an urgent care facility. The doctor looked me over and said I had an upper respiratory infection and that I should take cold medicine, and that I ought to be fine within a few days. She seemed very sure of herself. A few days later, I felt worse, and contacted my personal doctor, who refused to meet me in person over Covid concerns. After roughly a half hour, he said I had a heart condition, and set me up with a cardiologist. He seemed very sure of himself. The cardiologist's office refused to give me an appointment right away. And said I would have to wait two weeks. The next day I felt worse, and asked if I could come in sooner. They told me the earliest would be 10 days. The next morning I felt worse, and could barely get out of bed. So my wife and I agreed I should go to the emergency room. This was the height of Covid, so they made me wait outside for two hours and undergo numerous tests in the parking lot before they would even let me in the building. When I finally met a doctor, well, she said she thought I had a leaky bowel, and ran a test that came up negative. They then took me to a private room, where another doctor came in and said all signs indicated I had a leak in my upper GI tract. He seemed very sure of himself. He told me not to eat or drink for the next 18 hours so he could go down my throat with a scope and find the leak. He found no leak. And was kinda pissed off. I could tell. He said they were gonna release me so they could bring me back in a few days for more tests. But before they could release me another doctor came in and said he was gonna have me sent to a cancer hospital because he thought I had leukemia. I was sent to the hospital. They took some bone marrow. And confirmed his diagnosis. So I had four doctors take a look at me and tell me what they thought was wrong, and all four were totally wrong. Also relevant, one day, after my stem cell transplant, I noticed that the doctor whose gut instinct proved correct had an office by my son's dentist office. So I went in while my son was at his appointment. to thank him. He was with a patient so I had some time to kill in the lobby, and ended up explaining to two of his nurses why I was there. They were very proud of him, as he had saved my life. But here's the weird part. When he came out and I reminded him who I was he denied sending me to the cancer hospital on his instinct, and insisted--in front of his nurses--that he would not have sent me to the cancer hospital without first receiving the results of a bone marrow biopsy. Well, this is of course was bull, as no such biopsy was performed at the original hospital. I then realized--he had called an audible--and had essentially rescued me from the GI doctor who was convinced I had a GI leak. And he didn't want his nurses to know because, well, that just isn't done... So think about Perry. He knows what he saw LOOKED like an entrance wound, but has been told by the authorities it was an exit wound. He doesn't want to be one of the four doctors who'd come to an incorrect conclusion regarding my situation, but he also doesn't want to be seen as someone who second-guesses those responsible for making the ultimate determination...because it just isn't done...

You know of course that your hero Robert McClelland said many times in many places that the throat wound in the photos was as he remembered it looking after the tracheotomy.

Ok. Thanks. My apologies to Dr. McClelland, who repeated something like this in JFK: What the Doctors Saw. It was originally someone else's aged recollection. But the fact remains that it wasn't true. 1. No one involved in the autopsy called Perry during the autopsy. They should have but they didn't. The official story is that Humes--by his lonesome--called Perry the next morning. And this makes the most sense. IF they had called Perry during the autopsy and told him he was to say the throat wound was an entrance, not exit, well, wouldn't they have told the FBI--the Federal Agency responsible--that there was a throat wound? That they believed was an exit? Of course they would. The doctors' failure to know about and properly study the throat wound was a colossal failing--and incredibly embarrassing to the military and the doctors personally. It's not something they would make up for no reason. 2. Humes was a military doctor and would not have any authority over Perry's medical license. Now, if the story was that someone like Burkley or Katzenbach or some LBJ hatchet-man like Valenti had threatened Perry it would be a heckuva lot more believable. 3. Perry and others continued claiming the throat wound appeared to be an entrance for not only days afterwards, but the rest of their lives. There was no cover-up of the throat wound, outside the one I mentioned earlier--where the transcript in which Perry mistakenly said it was a throat wound and not that it appeared to be a throat wound conveniently disappeared.

Oh, no, Greg. They moved (re-interpreted) the wound location. The cowlick was not a separate wound--it was where they claimed the wound described in the autopsy report REALLY resided. The Clark Panel even gave the same measurements for this wound as the one described in the autopsy report (which I prove to be a lie on my website). While the HSCA did re-interpret the wound's measurements as well as its location, they still pretended the red spot in the cowlick was almost an inch from the midline of the skull (which I prove to be a lie on my website). Incredibly, moreover, in order to pull off this switcheroo, they had to claim the photo the doctors initially claimed showed the bullet entrance on the back of the head, really showed a bullet exit on the front of the head. It's a travesty, IMO. While a lot of people are drawn to this case because of the political intrigue, or the spy v spy stuff, it is the bald-faced brazen movement of the wound locations that sucked me down this rabbit hole. I just can't fathom how and why journalists and historians, let along members of the medical profession, let them get away with it. And still only pretend to give a crap...